The melodies of the General's Order and the sounds of golden drums were played passionately amid the smoke of gunpowder. The roar of cannons was like lightning and thunder in a clear sky, and the earth was shaking.
People were shocked by the wrath of the gods. Many Tangut soldiers of the coalition army on the eastern battlefield looked up at the sky, but they saw chaos all over the mountains and plains in the north.
Xu Jun's infantry were also moving according to military orders. The nearby bugle calls seemed to urge them on. Rows of two-color pennant flags were waving, and the air was noisy and dirty.
Yao Erniu and other soldiers could also read the flags, but they did not need to pay attention to the military orders, they just had to follow the orders of the ten generals. The team was slowly advancing forward in a horizontal column, and Yao Erniu carried the iron pipe firearm and followed the people on his left and right to move forward.
The Sword and Shield Heavy Infantry and the Divine Arms turned around and retreated in a column. Many of the brothers were covered in blood, and the smell drifted from the gaps between the teams. Yao Erniu was even more nervous. He was now in the first row. Even though he was an elite soldier who had fought many battles, he still couldn't feel relaxed in such a battlefield full of corpses and blood.
After a while, they ran into a group of enemy soldiers who were chasing the retreating Xu army, and the troops were spreading all over the hillside. In fact, the frequent roar of the cannons had made the attack of the infantry on the east side seem very hesitant, and the speed of coming up was obviously slowed down.
He was about to yell loudly to startle Yao Erniu. The brothers on both sides knelt on one knee, and Yao Erniu also knelt on one knee to lower his body. Without thinking, he blew the spark on the match, opened the lid of the primer, and skillfully raised the firearm horizontally.
The surging coalition army was only 20 to 30 steps away. Yao Erniu could clearly hear their fearful and angry shouts and see their eyes. Their faces were covered with dirt and dust, and even their armor was tattered and uneven. A large number of faces appeared in front of him. No one knew each other, and there was no hatred. But the strange thing about the battle formation was that those people who had no grudges at all were holding weapons and shouting that they wished they could grind him to ashes. Yao Erniu believed that if they rushed to him, they would definitely want to chop him into meat paste without hesitation.
Someone shouted from somewhere: The emperor has provided warm clothing and food for us brothers. It is time for us, the sons of the Han family, to repay the emperor's grace. We must be loyal and brave. The emperor's enemies are our mortal enemies and we will show no mercy.
Yao Erniu had heard these words of encouragement many times, but he didn't really care about them, because the moral principles had little to do with the reality of being stabbed by knives and arrows at any time. At this time, the arrows on his head were still raining down like clinking.
However, the generous words, coupled with the shouts of the troops that echoed through the valley, really made people's blood boil. Yao Erniu also felt the atmosphere of unity and courage, and now he was not afraid at all.
The crane flag at the head of the platoon was raised, and the gongs rang. Yao Erniu heard crackling sounds above his head, and the densely packed infantry approaching in front of him screamed. The lead bullets were invisible, and only blood splattered on the bodies of those people, and weapons were thrown everywhere.
Just after the volley, about the time of a marching drumbeat, Yao Erniu pulled the copper trigger on the firearm, and the whole row of firearms went off at this moment. While pulling the trigger, he tilted his head to the left and closed his eyes, and the sound of gunpowder exploding came from outside the leather earmuffs.
After the sound died down, the area in front of me was filled with smoke and I could not see the scene in front of me for a moment. I could only hear the heart-wrenching screams of pain.
The headman's shout came at the right time, and Yao Erniu and the others quickly stood up, turned around and followed the man surnamed Zhang in the second row. Soon, the men in front of them brushed past Yao Erniu's shoulders and passed by.
The tenth general shouted: "Good!" Yao Erniu quickly stood still, pulled out a wooden stick wrapped with a cloth strip, and quickly poked it into the gun barrel and rubbed the residue inside to clean it out, then blew hard at the fire pot a few times.
The cannons behind roared like thunder, the front crackled with gunpowder smoke, arrows flew overhead, shouts and screams filled the air. But Yao Erniu didn't care, his eyes were only focused on the complicated things at hand, and his hands and feet must be quick, otherwise when others were busy and ready to move forward, it would be like holding a fire stick and moving forward.
He used his teeth to bite open the straw paper plug on the bamboo tube, poured the black grains the size of millet into the barrel between his legs, then pulled out a wooden stick and poked it in with the smooth end, trying to press it down; then he took out a lead bullet that was tightly wrapped in linen and covered with slippery tung oil from the leather pocket at his waist, immediately stuffed it into the mouth of the tube, and poked it hard with the wooden stick. Now this iron tube is much smaller than the copper guns cast in the past, and the lead bullet is inserted very tightly.
Then he had to put on the primer, prime the pot, check the fuse, etc. This job seemed very tedious, but Yao Erniu preferred to go into battle this way. Although it was troublesome, it was not very strenuous. He heard that the barrel might explode and injure him, but these iron pipes were numbered. If they exploded before the prescribed number of uses, injuring soldiers and craftsmen would be punished. The possibility of encountering such a thing was much smaller than rushing up and being hacked to death, so he was not afraid at all. Otherwise, the imperial guards who had experienced rushing up with swords and guns and fighting desperately understood
Yao Erniu was busy with his work, totally unaware of what had just happened. When he looked up, he saw the coalition troops in front of him fleeing down the hillside. The infantry formation was dense, and there was chaos for a while, and many people were trampled and screamed loudly.
A few hundred feet down the hillside, tens of thousands of Allied Forces infantrymen were lined up in a motionless formation, while the chaotic soldiers in front were rushing towards the square formation on top of it.
Yao Erniu looked around blankly, only to see that the battle lines on the entire hillside were in disarray, with all the Dangxiang troops fleeing. The crowd was rushing down the hillside like a mountain torrent.
Yao Erniu and the soldiers around him, such as Zhao Dagen, were all stunned, looking at this sudden grand scene.
At this moment, the cannons on the west side roared, deafening. Some of the cannons were already aimed at the coalition infantry formations at the bottom of the hill. Iron balls flew into the infantry formations at the bottom of the hill.
Whether it was the Central Plains army or any tribe, as long as they were infantry, the formation would be very dense because from the perspective of individual tactics, two people killing one person would almost certainly win; the denser the formation, the more people would fight against the fewer in a local area. No infantry army would go into battle with such sparse formations as cavalry.
The iron ball flew over the heads of a group of people at a lightning speed, getting lower and lower. Bang, a head exploded, the bloody head suddenly tilted back, the neck snapped, the iron ball tilted and continued to fly into the crowd, bang, there was another terrifying collision sound, another soldier's chest was hit and the ribs faintly cracked, and the body fell backwards. The iron ball hit the torso with a large deviation, and the speed slowed down a lot, but it still injured several people. The crowd screamed with fear, and the atmosphere of fear spread like a plague.
After a while, another iron ball fell in front of a group of people. With a bang, sand and dust splashed everywhere. The iron ball immediately bounced up and flew straight into the crowd.
As the bombardment continued, the riots continued to spread, and the large formation of tens of thousands of people was already in a state of unrest. The sudden collapse of the crowd in front of them added to the signs of failure and despair.
On the hillside, the sound of drums rang out from the entire battle line. The infantry of Xu's army was in neat formation, with ten generals leading from the left side of each team. The troops followed the ten generals and trotted forward in two teams and two columns. On the loess hillside, teams of soldiers and horses rushed down one after another like weapons.
The Xu army's infantry had strict military discipline, and their battle formations were skillful and orderly. They advanced very quickly in columns, and formed horizontal columns dozens of steps apart very quickly. On the entire hillside, the movements of the troops in each city were different. When they formed horizontal columns one after another, it looked like the entire crowd was winding like a whirlpool, with countless iron helmets surging. But the people in each city and team who were not angry were mobilized according to the military orders of the generals, and the details were very orderly. Arrows fired by the coalition forces kept flying overhead, and from time to time, the armor joints of Xu army soldiers were shot through and injured, but the rain of arrows did not affect the battle formation at all.
The defeated Allied soldiers crowded into the large formation of tens of thousands of people. They could not retreat through the gaps between the formations because the artillery had disrupted large areas of the camps and the scattered and running people caused chaos in the front camps.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, volleys of firearms rang out from the south to the north. Invisible lead bullets penetrated people's bodies, and the screams of despair and fear sounded like ghosts and gods. Blood mist and gunpowder filled the battlefield.
Xu Jun's firearms and horse organization adapted to the change in tactics. A du had about 200 people, and a command had 600 people. A du had six teams of soldiers. One round of volleys was actually two volleys. One team knelt in front, and the other team stood. A du had a round, which was six volleys. The distance was only 20 to 30 steps, and as the attack continued to shrink,
The heavy casualties caused by firepower of this intensity were simply unbearable for the Dangxiang and Xi infantry in the atmosphere of defeat and their army collapsed long ago. However, the dense infantry formation was in chaos and it was difficult for the people in the middle to run as there were people everywhere. They had to squeeze backwards desperately. The scene was unbearable to watch, and it was like a riot in a busy city.
Teams of Xu's troops, holding simple matchlock guns, pointed at the panicked crowd and slaughtered the few men in front. Seeing that they could not escape, they rushed over with iron knives and screaming.
There was a crackle and a whole row of white smoke rising up, and the firelight flickered like stars. The men twitched all over as if they were having epilepsy, blood splattered on their chests, and they fell to their knees and leaned forward. Their weapons fell to the ground and stuck into the yellow earth with a clang.
In front of the crowd, corpses had already piled up, and dark red blood was flowing along the sand. The whole place was a bloody battlefield, and crying out to parents and heaven was useless. The wounded soldiers had blood all over their hands, and their voices were hoarse, but no one paid any attention, because people were shouting everywhere.
If this is the world, then this world must be another hell